cathedral chapter, discovered that the law was a surer road to wealth
and honor than the church, and decided that his son should leave
theology for jurisprudence. The son, nothing loath, obeyed, and left
Paris for Orleans, possibly, as he descended the steps of the College de
Montaigu, brushing shoulders with a Spanish freshman named Ignatius
Loyola. In Orleans Calvin studied law under Pierre de l'Estoile, who is
described as _jurisconsultorum Gallorum facile princeps_, and as
eclipsing in classical knowledge Reuchlin, Aleander, and Erasmus; and
Greek under Wolmar, in whose house he met for the first time Theodore
Beza, then a boy about ten years of age.
After a year in Orleans he went to Bourges, attracted by the fame of the
Italian jurist Alciati, whose ungainliness of body and speech and vanity
of mind his students loved to satirize and even by occasional rebellion
to chasten. In 1531 Gerard Calvin died and his son, in 1532, published
his first work, a commentary on Seneca's _de Clementia_. His purpose has
been construed by the light of his late career; and some have seen in
the book a veiled defence of the Huguenot martyrs, others a cryptic
censure of Francis I, and yet others a prophetic dissociation of himself
from Stoicism. But there is no mystery in the matter; the work is that
of a scholar who has no special interest in either theology or the
Bible. This may be statistically illustrated: Calvin cites twenty-two
Greek authors and fifty-five Latin, the quotations being most abundant
and from many books; but in his whole treatise there are only three
Biblical texts expressly cited, and those from the Vulgate.
The man is cultivated and learned, writes elegant Latin, is a good judge
of Latinity, criticises like any modern the mind and style, the
knowledge and philosophy, the manner, the purpose, and the ethical ideas
of Seneca; but the passion for religion has not as yet penetrated as it
did later into his very bones. Erasmus is in Calvin's eyes the ornament
of letters, though his large edition of Seneca is not all it ought to
have been; but even Erasmus could not at twenty-three have produced a
work so finished in its scholarship, so real in its learning, or so wide
in its outlook.
The events of the next few months are obscure, but we know enough to see
how forces, internal and external, were working toward change. In the
second half of 1532 and the earlier half of 1533 Calvin was in Orleans,
studying, teaching, practising the law, and acting in the university as
proctor for the Picard nation; then he went to Noyon, and in October he
was once more in Paris. The capital was agitated; Francis was absent,
and his sister, Margaret of Navarre, held her court there, favoring the
new doctrines, encouraging the preachers, the chief among them being her
own almoner, Gerard Roussel.
Two letters of Calvin to Francis Daniel belong to this date and place;
and in them we find a changed note. One speaks of "the troublous times,"
and the other narrates two events: first, it describes a play "pungent
with gall and vinegar," which the students had performed in the College
of Navarre to satirize the Queen; and secondly, the action of certain
factious theologians who had prohibited Margaret's _Mirror of a Sinful
Soul_. She had complained to the King, and he had intervened. The matter
came before the university, and Nicolas Cop, the rector, had spoken
strongly against the arrogant doctors and in defence of the Queen,
"mother of all the virtues and of all good learning." Le Clerc, a parish
priest, the author of the mischief, defended his performance as a task
to which he had been formally appointed, praising the King, the Queen as
woman and as author, contrasting her book with "such an obscene
production" as _Pantagruel_, and finally saying that the book had been
published without the approval of the faculty and was set aside only as
"liable to suspicion."
Two or three days later, on November 1, 1533, came the famous rectorial
address which Calvin wrote, and Cop revised and delivered, and which
shows how far the humanist had travelled since April 4, 1532, the date
of the _de Clementia_. He is now alive to the religious question, though
he has not carried it to its logical and practical conclusion. Two fresh
influences have evidently come into his life, the New Testament of
Erasmus and certain sermons by Luther. The exordium of the address
reproduces, almost literally, some sentences from Erasmus' _Paraclesis_,
including those which unfold his idea of the _philosophia Christiana_;
while the body of it repeats Luther's exposition of the beatitudes and
his distinction between law and gospel, with the involved doctrines of
grace and faith. Yet "_Ave gratia plena_" is retained in the exordium;
and at the end the peace-makers are praised, who follow the example of
Christ and contend not with the sword, but with the word of truth.
This address enables us to seize Calvin in the very act and article of
change; he has come under a double influence. Erasmus has compelled him
to compare the ideal of Christ with the church of his own day; and
Luther has given him a notion of grace which has convinced his reason
and taken possession of his imagination. He has thus ceased to be a
humanist and a papist, but has not yet become a reformer. And a reformer
was precisely what his conscience, his country, and his reason compelled
him to become. Francis was flagrantly immoral, but a fanatic in
religion; and mercy was not a virtue congenial to either church or
state. Calvin had seen the Protestants from within; he knew their
honesty, their honor, the purity of their motives, and the integrity of
their lives; and he judged, as a jurist would, that a man who had all
the virtues of citizenship ought not to be oppressed and treated as
unfit for civil office or even as a criminal by the state. This is no
conjecture, for it is confirmed by the testimony he bears to the
influence exercised over him by the martyred Etienne de la Forge. He
thus saw that a changed mind meant a changed religion, and a changed
religion a change of abode. Cop had to flee from Paris, and so had
Calvin.
In the May of 1534 he went to Noyon, laid down his offices, was
imprisoned, liberated, and while there he seems to have finally
renounced Catholicism. But he feared the forces of disorder which lurked
in Protestantism, and which seemed embodied in the Anabaptists. Hence at
Orleans he composed a treatise against one of their favorite beliefs,
the sleep of the soul between death and judgment. Conscious personal
being was in itself too precious, and in the sight of God too sacred, to
be allowed to suffer even a temporary lapse. But to serve the cause he
loved was impossible with the stake waiting for him, its fires scorching
his face, and kindly friends endangered by his presence. And so, in the
winter of 1534, he retired from France and settled at Basel.
Now a city where Protestantism reigned, where learning flourished, and
where men so unlike as Erasmus and Farel--the fervid preacher of
reform--could do their work unhindered, was certain to make a deep
impression on a fugitive harassed and expatriated on account of
religion; and the impression it made can be read in the _Christianae
Religionis Institutio_, and especially in the prefatory _Letter to
Francis I_. The _Institutio_ is Calvin's positive interpretation of the
Christian religion: the _Letter_ is learned, eloquent, elegant,
dignified, the address of a subject to his sovereign, yet of a subject
who knows that his place in the state is as legal, though not as
authoritative, as the sovereign's. It throbs with a noble indignation
against injustice, and with a noble enthusiasm for freedom and truth. It
is one of the great epistles of the world, a splendid apology for the
oppressed and arraignment of the oppressors. It does not implore
toleration as a concession, but claims freedom as a right.
Its author is a young man of but twenty-six, yet he speaks with the
gravity of age. He tells the King that his first duty is to be just;
that to punish unheard is but to inflict violence and perpetrate fraud.
Those for whom he speaks are, though simple and godly men, yet charged
with crimes that, were they true, ought to condemn them to a thousand
fires and gibbets. These charges the King is bound to investigate, for
he is a minister of God, and if he fails to serve the God whose minister
he is, then he is a robber and no king.
Then he asks, "Who are our accusers?" and he turns on the priests like a
new Erasmus, who does not, like the old, delight in satire for its own
sake or in a literature which scourges men by holding up the mirror to
vice, but who feels the sublimity of virtue so deeply that witticisms at
the expense of vice are abhorrent to him. He takes up the charges in
detail: it is said that the doctrine is new, doubtful, and uncertain,
unconfirmed by miracles, opposed to the fathers and ancient custom,
schismatical and productive of schism, and that its fruits are sects,
seditions, license. On no point is he so emphatic as the repudiation of
the personal charges: the people he pleads for have never raised their
voice in faction or sought to subvert law and order; they fear God
sincerely and worship him in truth, praying even in exile for the royal
person and house.
The book which this address to the King introduces is a sketch or
programme of reform in religion. The first edition of the _Institutio_
is distinguished from all later editions by the emphasis it lays, not on
dogma, but on morals, on worship, and on polity. Calvin conceives the
Gospel as a new law which ought to be embodied in a new life, individual
and social. What came later to be known as Calvinism may be stated in an
occasional sentence or implied in a paragraph, but it is not the
substance or determinative idea of the book. The problem discussed has
been set by the studies and the experience of the author; he has read
the New Testament as a humanist learned in the law, and he has been
startled by the contrast between its ideal and the reality which
confronts him. And he proceeds in a thoroughly juridical fashion, just
as Tertullian before him, and as Grotius and Selden after him. Without a
document he can decide nothing; he needs a written law or actual custom;
and his book falls into divisions which these suggest.
Hence his first chapter is concerned with duty or conduct as prescribed
by the Ten Commandments; his second with faith as contained in the
apostolic symbol; his third with prayer as fixed by the words of Christ;
his fourth with the sacrament as given in the Scriptures; his fifth with
the false sacraments as defined by tradition and enforced by Catholic
custom; and his sixth with Christian liberty or the relation of the
ecclesiastical and civil authorities. But though the book is, as
compared with what it became later, limited in scope and contents--the
last edition which left the author's hand in 1559 had grown from a work
in six chapters to one in four books and eighty chapters--yet its
constructive power, its critical force, its large outlook impress the
student. We have here none of Luther's scholasticism, or of
Melanchthon's deft manipulation of incompatible elements; but we have
the first thoughts on religion of a mind trained by ancient literature
to the criticism of life.
The _Institutio_ bears the date "_Mense Martio; Anno_ 1536"; but Calvin,
without waiting till his book was on the market, made a hurried journey
to Ferrara, whose Duchess, Renee, a daughter of Louis XII, stood in
active sympathy with the reformers. The reasons for this brief visit are
very obscure; but it may have been undertaken in the hope of mitigating,
by the help of Renee, the severity of the persecutions in France. On his
return Calvin ventured, tradition says, to Noyon, probably for the sake
of family affairs; but he certainly reached Paris; and, while in the
second half of July making his way into Germany, he arrived at Geneva.
An old friend, possibly Louis du Tillet, discovered him, and told Farel;
and Farel, in sore straits for a helper, besought him, and indeed in the
name of the Almighty commanded him, to stay. Calvin was reluctant, for
he was reserved and shy, and conceived his vocation to be the scholar's
rather than the preacher's; but the entreaties of Farel, half tearful,
half minatory, prevailed. And thus Calvin's connection with Geneva
began.
Calvin's life from this point onward falls into three parts: his first
stay in Geneva from July, 1536, to March, 1538; his residence in
Strasburg from September, 1538, to September, 1541; and his second stay
in Geneva from the last date till his death, May 27, 1564. In the first
period, he, in company with Farel, made an attempt to organize the
church and reform the mind and manners of Geneva, and failed; his exile,
formally voted by the council, was the penalty of his failure. In the
second period he was professor of theology and French preacher at
Strasburg, a trusted divine and adviser, a delegate to the Protestant
churches of Germany, which he learned to know better, making the
acquaintance of Melanchthon, and becoming more appreciative of Luther.
At Strasburg some of his best literary work was done--his _Letter to
Cardinal Sadoleto_ (in its way his most perfect production), his
_Commentary on the Romans_, a _Treatise on the Lord's Supper_, the
second Latin and the first French edition of his _Institutio_. In the
third period he introduced and completed his legislation at Geneva,
taught, preached, and published there, watched the churches everywhere,
and conducted the most extensive correspondence of his day. In these
twenty-eight years he did a work which changed the face of Christendom.
We come then to Calvin's legislative achievements as his main title to
name and fame. But two points must here be noted. In the first place,
while his theology was less original and effective than his legislation
or polity, yet he so construed the former as to make the latter its
logical and indeed inevitable outcome. The polity was a deduction from
the theology, which may be defined as a science of the divine will as a
moral will, aiming at the complete moralization of man, whether as a
unit or as a society. The two were thus so organically connected that
each lent strength to the other, the system to the church and the church
to the system, while other and more potently reasonable theologies
either died or lived a feeble and struggling life.
Secondly, the legislation was made possible and practicable by Geneva,
probably the only place in Europe where it could have been enacted and
enforced. We have learned enough concerning Genevan history and
institutions to understand why this should have been the case. The city
was small, free, homogeneous, distinguished by a strong local
patriotism, a stalwart communal life. In obedience to these instincts it
had just emancipated itself from the ecclesiastical Prince and its
ancient religious system; and the change thus accomplished was, though
disguised in a religious habit, yet essentially political. For the
council which abolished the bishop had made itself heir to his faculties
and functions; it could only dismiss him as civil lord by dismissing him
as the ecclesiastical head of Geneva, and in so doing it assumed the
right to succeed as well as to supersede him in both capacities.
This, however, involved a notable inversion of old ideas; before the
change the ecclesiastical authority had been civil, but because of the
change the civil authority became ecclesiastical. If theocracy means the
rule of the church or the sovereignty of the clergy in the state, then
the ancient constitution of Geneva was theocratic; if democracy means
the sovereignty of the people in church as well as in state, then the
change had made it democratic. And it was just after the change had been
effected that Calvin's connection with the city began.
Its chief pastor had persuaded him to stay as a colleague, and the
council appointed him professor and preacher. He was young, exactly
twenty-seven years of age, full of high ideals, but inexperienced,
unacquainted with men, without any knowledge of Geneva and the state of
things there. He could therefore make no terms, could only stay to do
his duty. What that duty was soon became apparent. Geneva had not become
any more moral in character because it had changed its mind in religion.
It had two months before Calvin's arrival sworn to live according to the
holy evangelical law and Word of God; but it did not seem to understand
its own oath. And the man whom his intellectual sincerity and moral
integrity had driven out of Catholicism could not hold office in any
church which made light of conviction and conduct; and so he at once set
himself to organize a church that should be efficaciously moral.
He built on the ancient Genevan idea, that the city is a church; only he
wished to make the church to be primary and real. The theocracy, which
had been construed as the reign of the clergy, he would interpret as
ideal and realize as a reign of God. The citizens, who had assumed
control of their own spiritual destinies and ecclesiastical affairs, he
wanted to instruct in their responsibilities and discipline into
obedience. And he would do it in the way of a jurist who believes in the
harmony of law and custom; he would by positive enactments train the
city, which conceived itself to be a church, to be and behave as if it
were indeed a church, living according to the gospel which it had sworn
to obey.
Thus a confession of faith was drawn up which the people were to adopt
as their own, and so attain clarity and concordance of mind concerning
God and his Word; and a catechism was composed which was to be made the
basis of religious instruction in both the school and the family, for
the citizen as well as the child. Worship was to be carefully regulated,
psalm-books prepared, psalm-singing cultivated; the preacher was to
interpret the Word, and the pastor to supervise the flock.
The Lord's Supper was to be celebrated monthly, but only those who were
morally fit or worthy were to be allowed to communicate. The church, in
order that it might fulfil its functions and guard the holy table, must
have the right of excommunication. It was not enough that a man should
be a citizen or a councillor to be admitted to the Lord's Supper; his
mind must be Christian and his conduct Christlike. Without faith the
rite was profaned, the presence of Christ was not realized. Moreover,
since matrimonial cases were many and infelicity sprang both from
differences of faith and impurity of conduct, a board, composed partly
of magistrates and partly of ministers, was to be appointed to deal with
them; and it was to have the power to exclude from the church those who
either did not believe its doctrines or did not obey its commandments.
These were drastic proposals to be made to a city which had just
dismissed its bishop, attained political freedom, and proclaimed a
reformation of religion; and Calvin was not the man to leave them
inoperative. A card-player was pilloried; a tire-woman, a mother, and
two bridesmaids were arrested because they had adorned the bride too
gayly; an adulterer was driven with the partner of his guilt through the
streets by the common hangman, and then banished. These things taxed the
temper of the city sorely; it was not unfamiliar with legislation of the
kind, but it had not been accustomed to see it enforced. Hence, men who
came to be known as "libertines," though they were both patriotic and
moral and only craved freedom, rose and said: "This is an intolerable
tyranny; we will not allow any man to be lord over our consciences." And
about the same time Calvin's orthodoxy was challenged. Two Anabaptists
arrived and demanded liberty to prophesy; and Peter Caroli charged him
with heresy as to the Trinity. He would not use the Athanasian creed;
and he defended himself by reasons that the scholar who knows its
history will respect. The end soon came. When he heard that he had been
sentenced to banishment he said, "If I had served men this would have
been a poor reward, but I have served Him who never fails to perform
what he has promised."
In 1541 Geneva recalled Calvin, and he obeyed as one who goes to fulfil
an imperative but unwelcome duty. There is nothing more pathetic in the
literature of the period than his hesitancies and fears. He tells Farel
that he would rather die a hundred times than again take up that cross
"_in qua millies quotidie pereundum esset_." And he writes to Viret that
it were better to perish once for all than "_in illa carnificina iterum
torqueri_." But he loved Geneva, and it was in evil case. Rome was
plotting to reclaim it; Savoy was watching her opportunity, the patriots
feared to go forward, and even the timid dared not go back. So the
necessities of the city, divided between its factions and its foes,
constituted an appeal which Calvin could not resist; but he did not
yield unconditionally. He went back as the legislator who was to frame
laws for its church; and he so adapted them to the civil constitution
and the constitution to them, that he raised the little city of Geneva
to be the Protestant Rome.
The _Ordonnances ecclesiastiques_ may be described as Calvin's programme
of Genevan reform, or his method for applying to the local and external
church the government which our Lord had instituted and the Apostles had
realized. These ordinances expressed his historical sense and gratified
his religious temper, while adapting the church to the city, so that the
city might become a better church. To explain in detail how he proposed
to do this is impossible within our limits; and we shall therefore
confine ourselves to the most important of the factors he created, the
ministry.
The ministerial ideal embodied in these ecclesiastical ordinances may be
said to have had certain indirect but international results; it
compelled Calvin to develop his system of education; it supplied the
reformed church, especially in France, with the men which it needed to
fight its battles and to form the iron in its blood; it presented the
reformed church everywhere with an intellectual and educational ideal,
which must be realized if its work was to be done; and it created the
modern preacher, defining the sphere of his activity and setting up for
his imitation a noble and lofty example.
Calvin soon found that the reformed faith could live in a democratic
city only by an enlightened pulpit speaking to enlightened citizens, and
that an educated ministry was helpless without an educated people. His
method for creating both entitles him to rank among the foremost makers
of modern education. As a humanist he believed in the classical
languages and literatures--there is a tradition which says that he read
through Cicero once a year--and so "he built his system on the solid
rock of Graeco-Roman antiquity." Yet he did not neglect religion; he so
trained the boys of Geneva through his catechism that each was said to
be able to give a reason for his faith "like a doctor of the Sorbonne."
He believed in the unity of knowledge and the community of learning,
placing the magistrate and the minister, the citizen and the pastor, in
the hands of the same teacher, and binding the school and the university
together. The boy learned in the one and the man studied in the other,
but the school was the way to the university, the university was the
goal of the school.